Inappropriate
by nlizzette7
Summary: Five times Nate isn't supposed to fall for Lillian van der Woodsen. / Mostly AU.


**inappropriate. [five times nate isn't supposed to fall for lily van der woodsen.]**

nate archibald x lily van der woodsen. pg-13

**_I was a quick-wit boy. _****Written for my darling A.**

* * *

_He was no more than a baby then._

_Well, he seemed broken hearted, something within him._

He loves often, but never truly.

That's the problem with Nate Archibald.

He might have loved Blair once, but he loved her more when he didn't have to, when she wasn't his. Because, you see, ignorance had always been blissful until it took the girl's hand and led her right to a boy who gave her something more tragic and awful and terrible and wonderful than Nate could ever fathom.

(It's not something Nate is sure he'd ever want to feel for himself.)

Nate loved Serena after, or maybe before – the timeline is blurred, and he'd like to keep it that way. He still remembers another boy from Brooklyn lining up behind him to stand in her orbit. His contender was a writer, and he thinks about that a lot. Even now.

You see, he'd once loved her shine, but never could fathom the words to describe it.

Dan did, Serena fell, and Nate realized that all diamonds are supposed to have facets. It was a good lesson for when he found the real thing.

**i. **

Nate is seventeen when it happens, early summer, and he's in Hamptons, where all the boys go to pretend they're in love.

Blair isn't there, and he's glad for it, glad he doesn't have to kiss her with closed lips and see barstools and blonde hair reflected in her brown eyes. Instead, he surfs, reads sports magazines in the empty house they all have a recurring invitation to, gets texts from Chuck…

**Don't worry, Archibald. I'll keep your gf entertained while you're cavorting about.**

(On one end of the line, Nate laughs at the joke. On the other end, Chuck doesn't.)

He's peeling off his wetsuit when he hears light footsteps patter down the marble flooring across the hall. Nate freezes, thumbs hooked into his waistband, chest bare, when a woman in white halts at the entrance of the wet room.

Nate watches her for a moment, doesn't even think about rolling the suit back up. Lily van der Woodsen is wearing an ivory one-piece, all intricate and tasteful, nothing like the stringy things that Serena teases him with, or the demure florals and wide-brimmed hats that Blair covers everything up with.

Nate parts his lips, eyes shamelessly raking from the woman's pinned chignon down to where her transparent shawl grazes her thighs.

Finally, his eyes dart up, his grin sheepish.

"Mrs. van der Woodsen," he greeted, setting back against the wall. "Hey."

"Nathaniel," Lily scolds, clasps her hands in front of her. "It's Lily. You know that."

His grin comes easy, like a little boy rewarded. "Lily."

Her lashes are long, her skin made even prettier by the lines around her eyes, the places where the sun has kissed her cheeks and left its mark. "Nathaniel."

He raises his brow, realizes that he likes it when she calls him that, feels like he's a half-inch taller, like her sophisticated grin and icy blue eyes are enough to dress him up in a suit and tie right then and there.

"Your mother isn't – "

"No, it's just…Serena's not…?"

But she is always poised, a subtle recklessness to her regality – a balance that the girls his age can't touch.

They don't have much to talk about, don't have much in common other than the fact that there's something bigger in their minds that their lives have room for. They sit at the counter, sun-soaked and quiet, split a plate of meats and fine cheeses –

Smile wide for no reason at all.

(For days after, that crook in the 1770 house becomes theirs, a Neverland for two creatures of folklore: The Snow Queen, Pan's lost boy. He tries to impress her, talks a lot about school and spits out titles he pretended to read, those theater shows he knows she likes.

And then it becomes easier. He puts on midnight performances, lets her slather chocolate paste on his forehead, whispers about her adventures past until he wants to kiss the smile back onto her lips.

Somewhere in the night, the waves whisper _forbidden_.)

**ii.**

Everything in Nate's life ends up being a fucking cliché anyway, so it's _Stacy's Mom _that's playing on the radio when he kisses Mrs. van der Woodsen for the first time, his chest hot from the sun and burning right through her cream shawl.

He's thought it a slow burn, those meetings at night and early morning, the week of words, the ones he's suddenly found inside of himself.

"Nathaniel." It's a gasp, a light press to his pecks.

He likes the way one blonde strand falls away from her bun, likes how her neck has untightened and the color of her eyes have melted from stone.

"Look – "

"No…" Lily trails off, blinks at herself, appalled.

"I'm seventeen today," Nate explains, eyes bright, breath fanning over her cheek. He smells like suntan lotion and sea salt, heady when it tangles with her Chanel Noir in the air. "That's the age of consent in New York now." Lily startles, and a dimple appears in his left cheek. "I checked."

Lily says nothing, presses her lips together in that pensive look she always gets.

"You said you were wild once – I think you still are." His smile promises impossible things. "I think I can give you that."

She starts to give him this look, more like a scolding mother than a teasing lover. Nate blanches when something catches in his throat.

"Look, I'm not a mistake," Nate says, holding her chin, gathering her delicate wrists into his other hand. "I'm not a mistake, Lily."

There's something about those words that sounds familiar, and the woman finds herself falling in the wrong direction, forcing the image of Constance uniforms and short-kilt clad youth parading through her mind.

_He doesn't belong to either of them_, she reasons as he kisses down her throat.

And after, when her fingers curl at the nape of his neck, she decides that there is barely anything that is really, truly hers.

He calls Lily beautiful in her ear, and she's weightless when he hitches her up onto the wet room counter.

(When she traces the muscles on his back, she finds the ripples of every teenage dream she thought she'd left behind.)

**iii.**

The thing with Lily is that she's tired of men.

Tired of the way they've learned to take with ungentle hands, shoved and pushed until she got lonely on her throne and learned to like it that way. She sometimes stares at Blair Waldorf and grows wistful, wonders what it's like to witness bloodshed and the harsh reality of obligation, wonders what it's like to have a man like Charles helping you up a mountain made of heartbreak and bones.

Regardless, she's tired of men and turns to a boy instead, thinks maybe she can shape him well before he breaks. But the road gets tangled when they venture off from sand and privacy – she turns to Brooklyn while Nate plays a dangerous game with Serena and Blair.

It reminds her of just how young he really is.

"You're getting married."

"Yes."

"To Bart Bass."

"Yes."

"Hey, don't look at me like I'm some little kid that you've already forgotten." He gets angrier thinking about her standing behind a glass wall with the other adults, in the same category as his father and mother, puppet strings wound tight around their knuckles, tied by extension to his maroon tie, the untouched copy of _Othello _on his desk.

"Nathaniel," Lily sighs, twisting the back of one pearl earring, setting the opal stone of her necklace right at the hollow of her throat. "You're young. Your life is just beginning. With college applications, Blair, your grandfather – "

"Is this about Serena? Is that what this is?"

Lily looks right into his eyes, but Nate isn't able to tell if she sees anything at all. "It's my decision."

He swallows, peers back and sees an adult's game, a twisted little love triangle that holds her at center point. But he isn't in it. He doesn't belong to any of it.

"Don't tell me how I feel," he accuses, already angry at himself for sounding so immature, for proving her right.

She smiles, might as well pat him on the head and shove him back to the kid's table.

(They don't speak for an entire summer, though she dreams of nights in California with a boy whose smile is as easy as breathing, and it makes her cheeks flush while she's in another man's bed.)

One month later, Nate develops a taste for older women.

**iv.**

Flash forward eight years, and the beach forgets – but the boy never will.

Nate marries a woman who doesn't make him see stars, and Lily binds herself to someone else, diamond rings and signatures shackling her wrists to keep her from seeing the sky.

When Mrs. Archibald gives birth to a bright-eyed boy with sandy hair, Lily smiles sadly at herself in the mirror, watches the corners of her lips turn down.

At the christening, she puts on lipstick, wears white. Nate doesn't bother to hide his stare.

"Hey, you," he greets when she surfaces from the powder room of the reception hall. Inside, William is holding her clutch on his lap, Serena is arguing with Dan and Rufus about indie cinema, and Blair is pointing out all of the indecent guests in the room to a giggling little Henry as Chuck smirks against her temple.

All is right.

Lily draws back, presses her lips tight together. All is right, except –

"I'm glad you came," Nate continues, but his eyes betray him when he adds, "Kiera appreciates the blanket you sent us."

Lily smiles. "Your son is beautiful, Nathaniel."

"Lily…"

"I should return to – "

The interception catches them in a collision. Nate anchors his hands at her hips, curls his fingertips into her dress, so rough that it draws a gasp. Her eyes widen when the man's lips find hers, and they inhale, a long breath that keeps them there. His hand slides over her shoulder, between her legs, to pull her thighs apart.

It's what happens on the Upper East Side: the heroes are selfish, the villains kind. The lost boy and his queen…there aren't any morals of the story there.

"I'm all grown up," is all Nate says when he draws away, backs up against the other wall.

It's never escaped her notice.

**v.**

Nate Archibald really, truly only loves once.

And much like all else he's experienced, it's simply not enough.

Lily gets sick, and it's real this time. Nate isn't the first to get the call – of course he isn't – and he's the last to come, eyes shadowed by sleepless bruises, knees pressing into the carpet by the foot of her bed. He's older now, smarter as he stares down at the sea of white, Lily curled up as she dozes off under silk, her glasses clinging to the crook of her finger.

He's older now, but the air still smells like summer.

"Hey."

He loosens his tie, climbs into bed with her, wraps himself around her as gently as he can manage. Lily stirs, blinks awake, always so calm. She lets out a pained sigh when he kisses the back of her neck.

"Nathaniel." The word comes out under a heavy breath, but it has the same effect.

"I hear," he says cleverly, "that you're trying to take off again." Nate talks against her skin, in a realm of naivety, and thinks it'll revive her if he's careful. "I knew you were a wild one, Miss _Rhodes_." His smile falters. "I just always thought you'd take me with you."

She smiles, half-asleep. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Sound so much like a little boy," Lily sighs. "It makes me feel like a criminal."

Nate grins. "Wild. Like I said."

"You're too charming for your own good."

He turns her over, gathers her side so that she can face him, and she wilts gently, gives him a smile that's infectious. "Want to take a road trip?"

Lily shifts. "Nathaniel."

"Want to?"

Lily frowns, tired now. "Where on earth will you take me?"

He curls into her, always one to seek comfort, and her fingers shake when they rake through his hair. "Our secret place. There are midnight snacks, and the beach is infinite…" He smirks. "I hear that the women really like their men young."

Her laugh knocks the breath out of her, and they don't speak after that.

(When Lily finally goes, her eyes don't work the right way, and she sees the tanned and shirtless seventeen-year-old who set her skin on fire and never really left after that.)

"Thank you," she whispers into his hair, and he pretends not to cry.

_And so with the slow graceful_

_Flow of age, I went forth with an age old desire to please_

_On the edge of seventeen._


End file.
